Can Movies Change Policy? Education, Mining Exposés at Silverdocs Aim for Impact

But the allure of this type of filmmaking, with its potential to alter national debate, policies and laws, is enduring. The proof is on display this week at the Washington, D.C.-area Silverdocs festival, which is showcasing nearly 100 new documentaries chosen from the festival circuit and 2,162 direct submissions.

"The range is quite spectacular," said the Silverdocs artistic director, Sky Sitney. There are three-minute shorts and two-hour features, high-end productions comparable to Hollywood studio films and "filmmakers who are literally maxing out credit cards and relying on the kindness of strangers." Political topics range from education and mining regulation to war and Middle East peace.


Amid today's din of Twitter, blogs and opinion-driven media, it's hard to imagine a communications medium more out of step than lengthy, painstaking and sometimes complex political documentaries. Those that become mainstream blockbusters are memorable because there are so few. Among those of recent years, beyond "An Inconvenient Truth," are "Super Size Me" (about the health hazards of fast food), "Food, Inc." (a critical look at the corporate food industry ) and Moore's critiques of the U.S. health system ("Sicko") and economic system ("Capitalism: A Love Story").

The great majority of documentaries, needless to say, do not play at the mall multiplex. Their venues are festivals, art house theaters, classrooms, community groups, cable TV, public broadcasting and, these days, such curated Internet sites as Snagfilms, Vimeo and Netflix. "You take advantage of every medium that there is," said Heidi Ewing, who made the Oscar-nominated "Jesus Camp" with Loki Films partner Rachel Grady (full disclosure: Grady is the daughter of Politics Daily writers Bonnie Goldstein and James Grady). "The optimal outcome for a film," Ewing said, "is that it gets a healthy theatrical release, an exciting festival run and wide TV release," followed by DVDs, town halls, schools and anywhere else people gather.

Ewing and Grady are in the enviable position of knowing beforehand that their projects will get considerable exposure. They directed a segment on education for "Freakonomics," a $3 million adaptation of the best-selling book, which opened the Silverdocs festival Monday and is due in theaters this fall. HBO financed another Grady-Ewing project, a portrait of neighboring abortion and anti-abortion facilities called "12th & Delaware," which will air Aug. 2. The pair is at work now on "Detroit Hustles Harder," a film about the future of Detroit, in partnership with PBS.

Less prominent documentary makers usually find themselves up against limits in their income and their audience. "There aren't many venues for commercially exploiting documentaries dealing with political issues," said Mitchell Block, who teaches, makes, markets and distributes documentaries. Block, whose executive producer credits include "Stealing America, Vote by Vote" and the PBS series, "Carrier," said documentary films are mostly seen by the same "educated people" who read The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. But a small audience doesn't always translate into minimal impact. "It's not necessarily how many people see a picture but rather who sees a picture," Block said.

By that standard, though its distribution plans are hazy, "On Coal River" is off to a good start. A night before its world premiere Friday at Silverdocs, it will be shown at a special Capitol Hill screening sponsored by Democratic House members Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island and Heath Shuler of North Carolina.

The film by Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood is about West Virginians who take on a coal company after medical problems arise at an elementary school near a coal waste dumping ground. The company is Massey, owner of the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, Va., where 29 miners died in an April accident. The film, shot less than three miles away from the mine, was made over six years for about $500,000 raised piecemeal by Wood and Cavanaugh.

"At its core the film is about a few people who are trying to protect their families, protect their community's health," Wood said. "They're taking unbelievably courageous and inspiring actions to make this happen. It's a film that everybody can relate to." The search for a distributor has just begun, he said, adding: "We would love to see it broadcast. In this day and age that's how you get it to the biggest number of people. But at the same time we do really want to put it in theaters and in front of audiences because there's something very special that happens when you show a movie like this to a group of people."

Silverdocs is staging a tribute to a documentary maker whose first film was so brutal that legal restrictions kept it from a wide audience for nearly a quarter-century. The director is Frederick Wiseman and the film is "Titicut Follies," his unsparing 1967 account of conditions in a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane. The legal barriers finally were lifted in 1991 and the film was on TV two years later -- too late, some said, for patients who suffered mistreatment, abuse and death in mental institutions in the interim.

It is hard to say exactly what might have happened had the film been seen more widely in 1967, but there is evidence that documentaries can move people and politicians. One of the most dramatic and effective was "Harvest of Shame," the Edward R. Murrow film about the desperate plight of migrant farm workers. It was shown on CBS the day after Thanksgiving in 1960. In 1963 Congress passed the first farm worker law addressing those conditions, which led 20 years later to further reforms.

The impact of "An Inconvenient Truth," the 2006 film about Al Gore's mission to educate people about climate change, is still playing out. The film earned Gore a Nobel Peace Prize and director Davis Guggenheim an Oscar. It raised the nation's consciousness about global warming, but also energized conservative skeptics and intensified clashes on the issue. The House took a big step toward limiting carbon emissions last year, the Senate is still struggling with its approach, and the Obama administration is doing what it can on its own.

Sitney predicts that Guggenheim's latest film, "Waiting for Superman," will "do for education what 'An Inconvenient Truth' did for global warming." That is, "take it out of specialized discussion and bring it into the national conversation." The film, screening Wednesday at Silverdocs, tells the story of several students in Washington, Los Angeles and New York. It's an indictment of the education system -- tough on teacher unions and education bureaucracy, wrenching in terms of what happens to the students.

In a turnabout from Guggenheim's climate-change film, perhaps inevitable given its heroes and villains, "Superman" is winning praise from conservatives and causing some liberal heartburn. Still, it's likely to have impact for a number of reasons. One, it's a tear-jerker. Two, it spotlights education leaders who defy partisan and ideological stereotypes -- among them D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee, Harlem Children's Zone founder Geoffrey Canada, and would-be schools savior Bill Gates. And three, its timing looks good. "Superman" is due in theaters this fall, and should be racking up momentum and award nominations early next year -- when Congress is expected to get serious about revisions to the No Child Left Behind law. It'll be an interesting test of the power of political documentaries.